Palestinian actor Alaa Shehada has won a Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for The Bridge, a one-man show that turns an arduous journey between the occupied West Bank and Jordan into a story about family, separation and daily life under occupation.
The recognition marks the second consecutive year Shehada has received the award. His previous production, The Horse of Jenin, won a Fringe First at the festival in 2025.
Presented by Palestine Comedy Club, The Bridge combines storytelling, stand-up and physical comedy as Shehada travels from his home in the occupied West Bank to Jordan carrying olive oil from that year's harvest.
The oil is a gift from his mother in Jenin to her sister in Amman, and is described by the production as a "gift of separation". To deliver it, Shehada must navigate Palestinian, Israeli and Jordanian checkpoints on a journey that becomes the backdrop for the 70-minute show.
The crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan is only about 180 metres long, but Shehada told journalists before the festival that the wider process can take as long as 12 hours.
"It's driving everyone mad," Shehada said. "It's a very simple right to have, which is travelling from your house to Jordan. Why does it take all of that?"
The experience provides much of the humour and frustration in The Bridge, while allowing Shehada to examine the symbolic significance of the crossing for Palestinians and the history of British involvement in Palestine.
It continues an approach he developed in The Horse of Jenin, where personal memories and comedy were used to tell a wider story about Palestinian life.
That production centred on a horse sculpture built in Jenin in 2003 from debris left after an Israeli military incursion. The landmark was destroyed by Israeli forces in 2023, prompting Shehada to build a show around what it had represented to the city.
Speaking to The National after his Fringe First win last year, Shehada said he wanted audiences to experience the contradictions of everyday Palestinian life rather than encounter it only through conflict.
"It's about what is in our skin," he said. "It's all about the story, about how hard the daily life is here, and funny sometimes, and confusing. So, it has everything in one day."
Comedy, he said, was particularly useful in challenging how Palestinians are represented internationally.
"Comedy has many ways of reaching people," Shehada said. "First, it breaks the stereotypes about Palestinians because international comedy has one stereotype about how Palestinians look and act."
He said images of Palestinians often focus on checkpoints and fighting, leaving little space for stories about relationships, teachers, families and the ordinary conversations that make up daily life.
Shehada trained for four years at The Freedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp and later developed a performance style drawing on clowning, stand-up, storytelling and masks.
He also co-founded the Palestine Comedy Club in 2019. The company runs workshops in the West Bank and tours internationally, using comedy and theatre to bring Palestinian stories to new audiences.
The second Fringe First adds to a run of recognition for Shehada's work at Edinburgh and underlines the continuity between the two productions. While The Horse of Jenin uses the destruction of a local landmark to explore memory, loss and resilience, The Bridge turns a routine journey into a wider examination of movement, separation and the restrictions shaping Palestinian life.
That balance between the everyday and the political has been central to Shehada's work.
"That's what makes it special to those not familiar with daily life of Palestinians," he told The National last year. "It makes you experience everything in terms of emotions. You're laughing; and then you're sad and depressed. Then you're confused and not understanding; and then you're educated. Then you're shocked; and then you're laughing so hard and then you have tears."
The Bridge ends its run at Assembly Roxy today, with additional performances at Assembly George Square Studios August 28–30.
